Book picks similar to
Escaping into the Night by D. Dina Friedman
historical-fiction
holocaust
historical
young-adult
The Song of the Stork
Stephan Collishaw - 2017
The Jewish girl seeks shelter from the Germans on the farm of the village outcast. Aleksei is mute and solitary, but as the brutal winter advances, he reluctantly takes her in and a delicate relationship develops.As her feelings towards Aleksei change, the war intrudes and Yael is forced to join a Jewish partisan group fighting in the woods.Torn apart and fighting for her life, The Song of the Stork is Yael's story of love, hope and survival. It is the story of one woman finding a voice as the voices around her are extinguished.What Reviewers and Readers Say:'An elegantly crafted, beautifully written novel about love, survival and hope against all the odds- The Song of the Stork is a reading experience to savour.' William Ryan'At once tightly written and suspenseful, Collishaw's historical novel is a darkly compassionate fable of human endurance in absolute extremity' Stevie Davies'The subtle melody of The Song of the Stork caught my soul with its first notes and didn't leave me until the very last ones. Stephen Collishaw takes your hand and leads you into a world of tragic beauty, inspiring strength and delicate kindness in the midst of horror and through this journey he reminds you of the sound of hope.' Aiste Diržiute'A harrowing novel about a Jewish girl abandoned in World War 2 and forced to fend for herself in a landscape crawling with sexual ambiguity and brutal violence. It’s a dark jewel that holds up for examination the proximity of terror and savagery to innocence and love. Yet The Song of The Stork is as much about the future as the past. Stephan Collishaw warns us how the times we live in might end up: with an oafish peasantry drunk on Brexit chasing children through the woods, just because their parents voted Remain.' Guy Kennaway' …a masterly work of condensed fiction that synthesises the art of a great writer with the knowledge of a keen researcher who has become immersed in the first-hand sources of the period… A beautiful book that will go down as one of the classics of the literature of the anti-Nazi partisans in the forests around Vilna during the Holocaust.' David Katz'The prose is sparse and understated and it reminded me at times of The Secret Diary of Anne Frank, which hints at the barbaric events going on in the world without ever displaying them in all their technicolour horror... The writing is hauntingly beautiful and poetic.' Madhouse Family Reviews'It is a refreshing read that is full of so much love and hope... I really loved this book, and is one that I have already been recommending.' The Reading Lodge'There are so many beautiful moments in the story, acts of kindness and small mercies that show human nature at its best... he gets under the skin of his characters and brings them fully to life on the page.' One More Page blog'The Song of the Stork is a beautifully written and poignant novel about a young girl in Poland during the Second World War… a moving read about an awful period in history, which is in fact troublingly relevant in the current political climate.' A View from the Balcony blog'Collishaw has done a fine job of balancing historical reality with the license of fiction, the grim facts of the holocaust with the poignancy of love, and through all it, he manages to offer a sense of optimism.' Words and Leaves blog
The Melody of the Soul
Liz Tolsma - 2018
The only person she has left is her beloved grandmother, and she's determined to keep her safe. But protecting Grandmother won't be easy--not with a Nazi officer billeted below them.Anna must keep a low profile. There's one thing she refuses to give up, though. Despite instruments being declared illegal, Anna defiantly continues to practice her violin. She has to believe that the war will end someday and her career will be waiting. Fortunately for Anna, the officer, Horst Engel, enjoys her soothing music. It distracts him from his dissatisfaction with Nazi ideology and reminds him that beauty still exists in an increasingly ugly world.When his neighbors face deportation, Horst is moved to risk everything to hide them. Anna finds herself falling in love with the handsome officer and his brave heart. But what he reveals to her might break her trust and stop the music forever. . . .
The Runaway Sisters
Ann Bennett - 2020
I saw the first glimmers of daylight over the roofs from the window before I heard it. We were used to air raids by then and I recognised German engines, but something felt different this time. They were closer than I’d ever heard them before…Devon, 1940: When fifteen-year-old Daisy is evacuated from her home in London, she knows she must look after her younger sister Peggy. She is the only one who can reassure Peggy that life will go back to normal, reading to her from their one battered children’s book, ensuring she takes the cough medicine their mother tucked in the pocket of her gas mask bag.But when the sisters’ new home is suddenly bombed, they are taken into the countryside, and Daisy quickly realises that not everyone at home is on the right side of the war. Forced to work in fields alongside orphan children, she finds herself drawn to a young boy called John, who has tried and failed to escape many times before.Then Peggy gets sick and Daisy knows that, to save her life, they must run away. But now Peggy is not the only one Daisy is desperate to protect. As war rages all around, Daisy learns that sometimes you have to sacrifice everything if you want to save the people you love. And that the choices you make in your darkest days will affect your family for generations to come…Perfect for fans of Lisa Wingate, Diney Costeloe and Shirley Dickson, The Runaway Sisters is a tale of heartwrenching loss and uplifting courage. It’s a story about family, and the light that can be found in the dark clouds of war.
The Safest Lie
Angela Cerrito - 2015
Anna draws the attention of Jolanta—the code name for the real-life Resistance spy Irena Sendler, who smuggled hundreds of children out of the ghetto. Jolanta wants to help Anna escape. Anna's mother drills her day and night, teaching her a new identity, that of Roman Catholic Anna Karwolska. Soon Anna is whisked out of Warsaw to a Catholic orphanage and then to a foster family.Anna's story is a suspenseful and deeply moving account of the sacrifices endured, the dangers faced, and the heroism demonstrated by courageous young victims, their parents and their saviors. It sheds light on yet another tragedy of the Holocaust: rescued children who lost not only their loved ones, but their very identities and Jewish heritage.
Izzy's Fire: Finding Humanity in the Holocaust
Nancy Wright Beasley - 2004
All 13 Jews ended up living in a 9?x12?x4? underground hole as World War II raged around them. Some lived underground for about seven months before being liberated by the Russian Army. Dr. Michael Berenbaum, project director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (1988-1993) and author of The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, says, ?Izzy's Fire is filled with the passion of one woman determined to do justice to the story of another woman who lived in hiding throughout the war years. The war has soul. One feels the intensity of the struggle to survive. One senses the decency of those who were ready to rescue and the evil that haunted a mother and father and their young child in the dangerous world they lived......"
The Mousetrap
Ruth Hanka Eigner - 2009
In The Mousetrap -- winner of the 2003 San Diego Book Award for an Unpublished Memoir -- she tells the harrowing true story of her experiences as a young Bohemian woman in the years after the Second World War ended. She tells of the understandable brutality with which she and her family and friends were treated after the Germans lost the war. She also tells the story of a mother-daughter relationship that, because of the terrible times in which they lived, threatened to kill them both.At the time of her death, Ruth had nearly completed the next portion of her autobiography, which is currently being prepared for publication.Learn more about Ruth Eigner at TheMousetrapBook.com or find her on page on Facebook -- https://www.facebook.com/TheMousetrap...From the Introduction to The Mousetrap --Now that I have finally brought myself to write of these events, which took place nearly sixty-five years ago in a middle European land which no longer exists, I am faced with the fact that Americans now coming of age, like my own grandchildren, will need some historical background. The country was Czechoslovakia, created in 1918, made up of a hodge-podge of nationalities – Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Hungarian, Poles and others -- previously ruled by the Austrians, losers of the First World War. My own people, ethnic Germans, had lived in this same territory for almost a thousand years, and since we spoke the same language as the Austrian rulers, I suppose we thought of ourselves as better than our neighbors. Many of us were also excessively proud of our German culture, believing that it was superior to that of the Slavic people who now vastly outnumbered us in the new country. There was great fear among chauvinists and prejudiced Germans that we might lose our national identity and be forced even to give up our language. These people argued and sometimes demonstrated violently for the creation of a new German country. And the uprisings they fomented were sometimes put down with corresponding violence. It was easy, therefore for Adolf Hitler to argue in 1938 that the German citizens of Czechoslovakia needed his protection. To “save” us, as he said, from the persecution of the Czechs, he annexed the part of the country in which we lived. I was only twelve when this happened, but I was old enough to remember that there was much cheering in the streets when the German troops marched in. I remember also that during the next seven years which passed before the defeat of the Nazis, Germans of my group, even boys I grew up with, enlisted or were drafted to fight in Hitler’s army. No doubt many of them joined in the persecution of those who had been our fellow Czechoslovakians for the past twenty years, the descendants of people who had been our neighbors for centuries. Who could blame the Czechs for wanting to get revenge once Hitler was gone, and they were back in power? They felt, that unless we were driven from the country, we would betray them again at the first opportunity. All this was understandable, but it did not lessen the fear of the German Czechoslovakians, both the innocent and the guilty among us, who faced this reciprocal terror. -- Ruth Hanka Eigner
Breaking Point: A Novel of the Battle of Britain
John Rhodes - 2020
Hitler's triumphant Third Reich has crushed all Europe--except Britain. As Hitler launches a massive aerial assault, only the heavily outnumbered British RAF and the iron will of Winston Churchill can stop him. The fate of Western civilization teeters in the balance.Johnnie Shaux, a Spitfire fighter pilot, knows that the average life expectancy of a pilot is a mere five hours of operational flying time. Sooner or later, his luck will run out. Yet he must constantly summon up the fortitude to fly into conditions in which death is all but inevitable and continue to do so until the inevitable occurs...Meanwhile, Eleanor Rand, a WAAF staff officer in RAF headquarters, is struggling to find her role in a man's world and to make a contribution to the battle. She studies the control room maps that track the ebb and flow of conflict, the aerial thrust and parry, and begins to see the glimmerings of a radical strategic breakthrough...Breaking Point is based on the actual events of six days in the historic Battle of Britain. The story alternates between Johnnie, face to face with the implacable enemy; and Eleanor, in 11 Group headquarters, using 'zero-sum' game theory to evolve a strategic model of the battle.
Courage to be Counted
Eleri Grace - 2019
When she wins a coveted overseas post with the Red Cross, she focuses on her war service. Falling hard for a sexy pilot wasn't part of her plan. Jack Nielsen has a mission. Motivated by patriotic duty and desire to avenge the death of his best friend, Jack commands a ten-man B-17 crew. Keeping himself and his men alive in the fire-filled skies over Europe will require Jack's full focus. Romancing a headstrong Red Cross Girl is a distraction he knows he shouldn't indulge. While Vivian's work takes her across France and into the heart of Nazi Germany, mounting casualties drive Jack to confront his dwindling odds of survival. As Allied forces converge on all fronts, can Vivian and Jack's relationship withstand an excruciating battle between love and duty?Courage to be Counted is the first book in the Clubmobile Girls series of thrilling historical romances. If you like brave military heroes, trailblazing heroines, and romance under fire, then you'll love Eleri Grace's page-turning tale.
Buy Courage to be Counted and soar into this historical romance today!
The Ventriloquists
E.R. Ramzipoor - 2019
Engrossing.” —
Booklist
, starred reviewIn this triumphant debut inspired by true events, a ragtag gang of journalists and resistance fighters risk everything for an elaborate scheme to undermine the Reich.The Nazis stole their voices. But they would not be silenced.Brussels, 1943. Twelve-year-old street orphan Helene survives by living as a boy and selling copies of the country’s most popular newspaper, Le Soir, now turned into Nazi propaganda. Helene’s world changes when she befriends a rogue journalist, Marc Aubrion, who draws her into a secret network that publishes dissident underground newspapers.The Nazis track down Aubrion’s team and give them an impossible choice: turn the resistance newspapers into a Nazi propaganda bomb that will sway public opinion against the Allies, or be killed. Faced with no decision at all, Aubrion has a brilliant idea. While pretending to do the Nazis’ bidding, they will instead publish a fake edition of Le Soir that pokes fun at Hitler and Stalin—daring to laugh in the face of their oppressors.The ventriloquists have agreed to die for a joke, and they have only eighteen days to tell it.Featuring an unforgettable cast of characters and stunning historical detail, E.R. Ramzipoor’s dazzling debut novel illuminates the extraordinary acts of courage by ordinary people forgotten by time. It is a moving and powerful ode to the importance of the written word and to the unlikely heroes who went to extreme lengths to orchestrate the most stunning feat of journalism in modern history.
Tamar
Mal Peet - 2005
Out of the past, another Tamar emerges, a man involved in the terrifying world of resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Holland half a century before. His story is one of passionate love, jealousy, and tragedy set against the daily fear and casual horror of the Second World War -- and unraveling it is about to transform Tamar’s life forever. From acclaimed British sensation Mal Peet comes a masterful story of adventure, love, secrets, and betrayal in time of war, both past and present.
The Night I Danced with Rommel
Elisabeth Marrion - 2013
Having Polish friends meant it was becoming increasingly unsafe for her to stay there and she finds a new life in the Harz Mountains. This taking her still further away from her home and her beloved younger sister, Erika.In Goslar, Hilde meets her husband, Karl, a young officer in the German Army.When he joins the 7th Panzer Brigade led by General Erwin Rommel at the beginning of WW II, Hilde is left to bring up their children in war-torn Germany.After Rommel's promotion to Field Marshal, Karl follows him to Africa, later Italy and ultimately Karl is posted to the Russian front. Hilde's story is based on facts and is told by her youngest daughter, Elisabeth
Memories of Glass
Melanie Dobson - 2019
As war rips through the heart of Holland, childhood friends Josie van Rees and Eliese Linden partner with a few daring citizens to rescue Eliese’s son and hundreds of other Jewish children who await deportation in a converted theater in Amsterdam. But amid their resistance work, Josie and Eliese’s dangerous secrets could derail their friendship and their entire mission. When the enemy finds these women, only one will escape.Seventy-five years later, Ava Drake begins to suspect that her great-grandfather William Kingston was not the World War II hero he claimed to be. Her work as director of the prestigious Kingston Family Foundation leads her to Landon West’s Ugandan coffee plantation, and Ava and Landon soon discover a connection between their families. As Landon’s great-grandmother shares the broken pieces of her story, Ava must confront the greatest loss in her own life―and powerful members of the Kingston family who will do anything to keep the truth buried.
Dorchen: A Childhood Lost in War-Torn Germany
Maria Stetler - 2014
She was an ordinary German schoolgirl from an average family thrust into the extraordinary circumstances of war. Her memoir vividly describes the price she, her family, and all the German people paid for Hitler's ambition. Relived through her memories, it is truly a story of childhood innocence lost, but also of survival through grit and courage. She endured air raids, bomb shelters, military training, capture, imprisonment, rape and harrowing escape. The author has created a razor-sharp, clear-eyed and tense narrative about her life during this frightening time, as well as the story of her early struggles as a German war bride settling into a new life in America. This is Dorchen, and she is a remarkable woman.
Dash for Dunkirk
Denis Caron - 2017
May 1940: Royal Air Force pilot Harry Fitzgerald is one of millions of heroic Allied troops fighting against Nazi Germany. In the pitched heat of battle over the skies of Northern France, Fitzgerald is shot down by an enemy plane and captured. Miraculously, he escapes certain death but must make his way back to the Allied evacuation at Dunkirk to get back home. However, Fitzgerald is in the middle of a warzone. At a chateau turned hospital, he encounters two of his wounded comrades. Too sick to reach Dunkirk by themselves, they helplessly lie in wait as the German army advances. Fitzgerald knows he must save them, and with the assistance of the French nurse Solange, the refugees attempt to reach Dunkirk-before the Nazis can reach them. It’s a life-or-death mission through dangerous territory where nothing is guaranteed. In Dash for Dunkirk, authors Denis Caron and Fran Connor explore a world where loyalty and bravery face off against an unforgiving enemy. Bound together by duty and honor, war heroes push themselves to the limit through refugee-crowded streets, mechanical setbacks and enemy attacks. Will they reach safe harbor, or will the ultimate evil finally prevail? Praise for Dash for Dunkirk > "A wildly entertaining, action packed story not only about the reality of war, but also of loyalty, friendship, and romance. A must read! - Jordan Ebare, Avid Reader & Historical Fiction Enthusiast
Two Who Survived: Keeping Hope Alive While Surviving the Holocaust
Rose Schindler - 2019
When the persecution of Jews begins, both are plucked from their reality and thrust into concentration camps. They are stripped of everything they know and forced to navigate a truly incomprehensible, volatile, dangerous and unpredictable world. Even when separated from support systems and family members, their drive to survive helps them cope. Despite their exposure to the horrors of the Holocaust, they endure and carry on with a determination that shapes their character forever. Follow the lives of Rose and Max as they learn to adapt to a reality beyond belief and emerge stronger than ever. When they are finally liberated from their concentration camps, they navigate a new world individually before eventually coming together to form what each so tragically lost: A FAMILY